Norway sets aside 2 million kroner to adopt OpenOffice.org

The controversial ISO vote that accepted Microsoft’s Office Open XML as a standard continues to have

fallout effects. Norway’s government today announced it was setting aside 2 million kroner — about $285,000 — to encourage its public sector to adopt OpenOffice to reduce dependency on Microsoft Office, the AP reports. Norway’s standards body was torn apart after it officially voted “yes” to accept OOXML as an ISO standard in April. (Here’s an account of how Norway changed its original “no” vote to a “yes” vote written by Steve Pepper, chairman of the Norwegian mirror committee, who later resigned in protest.)

As of October, Norway had lost 13 of the 23-members on its technical committee for Standards Norway, the country’s overarching standards organization. But from Microsoft’s point of view, the “yes” vote that it managed to “officially” gain did not serve its purpose. Norway is a powerhouse country in the world of IT and software development. Its efforts to adopt an alternative to Microsoft Office could become a model for other countries to follow. And where government goes, so will large sectors of the private sector.

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